Hi, I use an e-commerce software to build an online store (PHP). I am interested in SEO for my website to achieve higher ranking. My store has the option to convert all of the pages into HTML, but I can't seem to get a proper sitemap to build itself from the software. Is there a downside to having only the main pages of my website indexed on Google? I am thinking about having splash pages for the main product categories (HTML) and having those link to the PHP pages (saves me time and a headache). This way the product pages remain PHP while my product category pages are SEO optimized and indexed. So that's the back-story, is there a downside to only indexing a few splash pages and not including all pages on the website? Even though they are just product pages and don't have any content on them anyways? Thanks
Yes, of course! When you can have 200 pages in Google index, why limit yourself to just a few? Your sub pages can be good in tackling wide long tail keywords (imagine users who are searching for your exact product names). Basically Google (and most major search engines) nowadays have no problem in crawling dynamic webpages thus there shouldn't be any dilemma between HTML and PHP. An instant example, try search "hitachi drilling machine" (sorry, I can't post URL here yet); notice Google is ranking the pages built in PHP, PDF, and HTML in top 10!